


(so what if you can see) the darkest side of me

by fragilethings



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, i'm kastle trash, karen is basically daredevil, kastle - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-26
Updated: 2016-03-26
Packaged: 2018-05-29 06:00:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6362278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fragilethings/pseuds/fragilethings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She doesn’t know, these days, if it’s ‘Karen follows danger’ or ‘danger follows Karen’. Sometimes the line isn’t a line, it’s a circle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	(so what if you can see) the darkest side of me

**Author's Note:**

> This is un-beta'd because I'm in Kastle hell. My first fic on here, feedback is much loved!

Karen loves nothing more than hearing everything narrow down to the blood pounding in her ears. 

As a child she’d held up the odd-shaped shells her grandma had brought home from holidays to beaches in Spain or France to her ear, and really believed it was the vast roar of the ocean. Believed she could hear the swell of the tide on hot, golden sand. She’d nestled into a fraying, mangled couch and imagined feeling the grains shifting underfoot – she’d never seen the sea. Now she’s older she knows the difference; now she gets her kicks through hammering a mantra of gloves on hook and jab pads, or beating the stuffing from punchbags. And still that sound, the whole world narrowing down to a pinprick of nothing more than her laboured breathing, the heavy slap of leather, her feet like a dancer’s scuffing hard concrete, it’s the thing that sets all her senses on fire.

She closes her eyes and imagines she’s the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen, not Matt – Matt, whom she resolutely refuses to think about more often than not, she’s done with liars and dishonesty. She feels the sweat beading on her brow and the split-second crush of her fists, wrapped tight in their gloves, battling the punchbag, and her blood _singing_ through her veins. Measures each hit by feeling the bag move and sway, hits harder and harder until there’s no breath left in her and folds over, hands on knees, her entire body stinging and sore and she’s _alive_ and it’s okay. 

_It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay._

*

It’s been seven months since Nelson and Murdock officially closed their doors. Sometimes when she’s feeling nostalgic, Karen swings past the old office en route to or from work and pretends she’s not crossing her fingers and hoping to see Foggy fumbling with his keys outside, or god forbid, even Matt. She knows it’s a no-go; she sees Foggy every Tuesday for a drink at Josie’s and he’s settled into that swanky new office on the other side of town and she supposes that’s okay, Matt let him down as much as her. 

It’s past nine on a Friday night and she walks past anyway, just in case.

Somehow, even though she knows she _knows_ it’s over and they’re closed and it’s done, she’s still disappointed at the sight of closed blinds and darkened windows.

Maybe she’ll get used to it eventually.

Ever since the trial and everything to do with the Punisher—with, with Frank, she’s been digging. Sometimes she gets the impression people don’t like her digging. Karen’s been shadowed more than once on her way home and scurried away mouse-like with her keys clawed haphazardly between her fingers too many times to count. It took approximately a week and three days of this before she took up boxing as an extracurricular. A month later she was attacked on a takeout run by some Dogs of Hell who’d taken askance with her more-than-public remarks on a late member of the gang. She’d slunk home with a couple of cracked ribs and a busted lip and a stab wound she’d patched up with some rudimentary first aid and thought, _never again_ and trained the harder. 

(After a while, being scared had gotten boring.)

She doesn’t know, these days, if it’s ‘Karen follows danger’ or ‘danger follows Karen’. Sometimes the line isn’t a line, it’s a circle.

So, it’s past nine on a Friday night and she’s a five-block walk from home and there’s someone following her. More than one actually, at least three by her count, dipping in and out of streetlight and shadow – and her first reaction isn’t fear, though that certainly does spike, she can feel her heartbeat racing that much faster. No, Karen Page slows her pace, throws her hair into a haphazard ponytail, and stops dead. The first guy runs straight into a jab to the throat, the second to a swift kick in the shin, because give her a break she’s been training for all of a month. It stalls him long enough for her to deliver a knee to the gut while he’s doubled over, but by this point there’s the hands of Assailant Number Three tangled in her hair and yanking her away from Two. And maybe Karen already knows she’s fucked. She stumbles into a wall hard and he’s crowding into her, and his fist in her hair cracks her skull against it. She sees stars and tastes copper and--

“We fucking warned you, Page.” He’s growling, when her vision clears. Another Dog of Hell. His face looks familiar. He’s close enough Karen can see the faded purple bruise beneath his left eye. She grins wildly.

“Not well enough, obviously.” She counters.

His fist tightens in her hair, and suddenly he slams her head against the wall again. Harder. She forgets how to breathe for a moment, fighting the pain. It vibrates through her, like that pins and needles feeling times maybe ten thousand. “Don’t get smart, bitch. Stop digging.”

“Are you gonna kill me or not, asshole?” (why is it that in these moments she feels most alive? Toeing the line, seeing how far she can push it. She can’t take three of them, not even two, barely one. She knows that.)

His lips curl back a little. More of a sneer than a snarl. “Think of this as your last chance. Stop. Digging.” 

Karen’s skull meets brick again, and this time the world goes black.

*

She wakes up curled in on herself on a bed of glass and concrete. Everything hurts. Her body feels like one big bruise and the scrapes from the brick on her face are a pulsing in-and-out sting. Her head feels like it’s full of bees and she swallows thickly and tastes her own blood. Nice.

For her first few seconds of consciousness the world’s blurry and out of focus. That’s why it takes her a beat to realise he’s there. Combat boots and plain black pants, white undershirt and a tattered hoodie and jacket. A black cap casting shadow over his eyes. Very nondescript. But Karen would recognise Frank anywhere; built like a bruiser with a knife-wound smile and that hollow look in his eye.

“Hi.” It’s all she can really think to say. “How long have you been watching me bleed on the floor?”

“’Bout ten seconds. It’s not a good look for you.” He observes, crouching in front of her. His fingers ghost across her temple, unthinkably delicate, probably checking the extent of the injury. She can feel the lump forming there, and the blood now dried to her skin. 

“I’ve looked better.” She agrees, noting the softness in his expression. It’s a look she’s seen in fleeting moments before: in the hospital, in the diner, in her apartment moments before the place got shot to shit. Everything’s woozy right now and maybe she’s allowed to wonder if it’s a look he reserves solely for her. “Help me up? Please?”

“Yes, ma’am.” He murmurs, shifting his weight a little. 

She’d assumed he was going to offer her a hand up, but instead he’s working his hands underneath her and scoops her up, one arm supporting her back, the other tucked under her knees. His chest is solid and warm against her side, reassuring somehow. For a murderer.

“I’m so tired, Frank.” She tells him, biting down the very large part of her that wants to tell him she can walk, thankyouverymuch, probably because she can’t. 

“You can’t sleep yet. You might have a concussion.” He informs her, “How many were there?”

“Three.”

“Who?”

“Dogs of Hell.”

He pauses. “They do anything else?”

“No.” she tucks her head into his shoulder and closes her eyes a second. “Nothing like that.”

When he next speaks, she can hear the rumble of his voice in his chest before it works its way to speech. “Good.”

“My head feels like the way white noise sounds.” She tells him as he strides towards her building.

She doesn’t bother questioning how Frank knows where her new place is, just slides her key into the lock when he adjusts his hold on her to let her. He lowers her onto the threadbare couch gently; making sure her head is cradled with pillows. Then he straightens, strolling around her apartment like he owns the place. Karen watches him head to the tiny kitchen and put a pot of coffee on, turn the lamps on in the corner of her living room. He turns the TV on low and passes her the remote from the coffee table, even waters the god damn dying plant she’s been ignoring in the kitchen, all the while humming something softly under his breath. Somehow it’s everything she’d have expected if she’d let herself wonder. 

She pushes herself to sit up, though it makes her head spin. “How’d you find me?”

He comes to settle in front of her – even crouching, he’s almost eye-to eye with her. It’s been seven months, she’d almost forgotten how broad he was, how much space he filled. “I was in the area,” a smile flickers at the corners of his mouth, “goin’ to the shop for kibble, actually.”

She laughs and it hurts, “You have a dog?”

“A pitty.” He nods, “Scout. She’s gorgeous, took her from the Irish that time, ‘m sure you recall.”

She’s glad she doesn’t have to admit it, but there’s something inside her softens too, at that. Of course he’d have a dog. “You know what I said, in the cabin, Frank? I, I didn’t mean--- well, I thought I meant it, at the time, but, um, things…they’ve---”

“Changed?” Frank’s hand ghosts ever so lightly across the scrapes on her cheek. “I sorta guessed that for myself, considerin’ you’ve been tryin’ to bust up half of Hell’s Kitchen since I left.”

He grins, properly this time. In the dim light of her apartment his rugged features are highlighted in golden glow, her eyes drawn from those dark, smiling eyes to his crooked nose to the perpetually busted lip. He looks tired, Karen notices, and reaches out to push his cap to the floor and run her fingers through his hair. She doesn’t know what forced the urge, but he tilts his head a little into her touch, and his eyes flutter shut for a moment. 

“Yeah. They changed.” She agrees, softly. “It got worse here, since you left.”

Frank presses his lips the heel of her hand and straightens, striding to her cramped bathroom. She can hear him fumbling in her cupboard for what she assumes is the first aid kit, and settles for letting her eyes zone in on the TV. He comes back quietly, almost startling her out of her trance, with a bowl full of warm water and her first aid kit in hand. Settling in front of her like before, he dabs gently at the scrapes on her face with cotton buds, discarding them on the coffee table one by one until there’s a collection. There are bruises blooming there, she can feel them, but at least each cotton bud discarded has less blood than the last, until finally he’s smoothing antiseptic cream over her swollen face and offering her painkillers, which she swallows dry.

“You’re a good little medic, huh.” She teases, eyes flickering to meet his. 

“This ain’t my first rodeo.” There’s a smile in his voice; it reaches his eyes. “How’re you feelin’?”

“Like shit.” She tells him, bracing her elbows on her knees. It’s true, her entire body hurts, even though the only real damage was to her head. 

Frank looks at her with that fucking _softness_ in his eyes again and something in her stomach twists, realisation hitting harder than a freight train. The man in front of her sees her for what she is. Matt had always thought she was fragile as glass, tried to coddle her away from danger even when she got caught in the crossfire anyway. Frank Castle, he sees that maybe she’s made from glass but the edges are sharp and he’s sitting here crouched in her apartment seven months after she told him he was dead to her and… And he sees all the sharp pieces of her and wants to help her put them back together. And he has a goddamn _dog_.

And Frank’s broad and strong, all thick, corded muscle and military precision, and _warm_ and caring and maybe he’s done things but she’s done things too and Karen, Karen’s so tired of being afraid and alone in this hellhole of a city. She doesn’t want to be saved. She wants the shitstains in this place to be scared of her, not the other way around.

“Karen?” his fingers brush her cheek again, the light from the TV pirouetting across his face. And, just, fuck--

“I want you to stay.” She bursts out, “I want you to carry me to that bed and I want you to hold me. And in the morning we’ll figure this out, whether we do it my way or yours, I—bring your goddamn dog here too and we’ll call it our place. I’m tired of being so fucking terrified, Frank, I’m done…I’m done being scared.” 

There’s a heartbeat where he just blinks at her, his expression unreadable, and Karen half thinks he’s gonna stride out of her apartment and disappear into the night like she’s seen him do so many times before. 

Instead, a grin tips across his face again and he doffs his (imaginary) cap to her, since she’d pushed his real one to the floor. “Yes, ma’am.” 

Next thing she knows he’s scooping her up again, remembering to be gentle (she might never get over that, this gentleness from such a dangerous man, it makes her heart tighten in her chest) and she’s being lowered down on her bed and he’s resting over her, just lightly, balancing his weight on one muscular arm. It feels good, his solid weight pressing over her, safe. 

“There’s good in you, Karen Page. Don’t lose it for the likes of me.” 

“We’ll work it out.” She murmurs, and he ducks his head to press a warm, chaste kiss to her lips. He tastes of coffee.

“I know.”

*

The sun rises the next morning with his head cushioned on her stomach, eyes open, her fingers carding through his hair slowly. It’s everything she never thought she wanted.

**Author's Note:**

> PS Join me on tumblr [valiantbucky](http://valiantbucky.tumblr.com) in my Kastle trash heap


End file.
